Warmth
by helebette
Summary: A Swan Queen love story based loosely on Warm Bodies. Regina is dead inside until she meets Emma. Actually, Regina is basically just dead until she meets Emma. Written for a fanfic challenge:) M for gore. Sexy times will have to wait for a sequel.
1. Chapter 1

I've managed to retain much of my beauty since my death. It's funny how important that is to me. It's even funnier to think of the times that I've worried over it. Times like this. As warm living bodies enter our 'home' to send us to our shuffling demise.

My friend, _Ruuuu_…whose name I cannot say…she sometimes grunts about how beautiful we both still are. Or, at least I think that that's what she's grunting about.

Right now, _Ruuuu_…whose name I cannot quite say…is chomping on the warm, decadent neck meat of a young human. Well then. Good for her. I'm not as hungry as she is. It's a shame that her lovely yellow sun dress is going to be covered in so much more waste. Human red waste makes such terrible stains. And what's worse, is the fact that the waste doesn't find its way to one's mouth. Our kind are unfortunately messy eaters. I'd talk to _Ruuuu _about it, but my lips don't move much these days. At least they're there. I mean at least they're not all torn off like most of our friends.

"I'm really not that hungry." I try to say to the young ruffian to attempts to stab me in the head. But it comes out as a grunt and a moan. And then…well, fuck it. Fuck him. He tries for another head shot and I tear out his throat. I'm afraid of the darkness, I'm sure he is as well, how dare he try to bring it upon me? What have I ever done to him?

His arm is soft under my teeth. Then someone shouts at him and his brains suddenly explode all over me. He's met the darkness before I could give him the limited life I know. What a shame.

I pocket some of his brains for later. I'm not in the mood. All of this chomping and gnashing is just vulgar.

And my hunger is the last thing on my mind when I catch sight of the warmth of Her.

She. Her.

Hair like spun gold. I remember the feel of long hair through my fingers. Just all of a sudden. I remember being alive.

I'd had a girlfriend. That's right. Her name had been…I'm not sure. I like this new girl better whoever She is.

"You should look out." I say to Her, when two of my friends lean and nearly topple Her.

And then, someone screams,

"Emma!"

Emma has long blonde hair that falls in waves at her shoulders. She's wearing a plaid shirt that is quickly soaking up the gore and guts spraying all around her.

Still, she is utterly beautiful. And there is a warmth in my chest that I haven't felt in a long time. Actual warmth, so different from the cool emptiness that fills me.

The fight isn't going well for the living. I find myself ambling close to Emma, just watching her. _Ruuuu_ tries to amble close as well. She's obviously still hungry. But I shake my head and _Ruuuu_ looks angry but stays away.

"Come with me…" I say. But it startles Emma. I guess she hadn't seen _Ruuuu _ behind her like that. Her gun swings around and I feel really, really sad at the thought of it. That she might fear me. So I point. Away from us, toward an exit. And I nod. And I try to smile. The smiling thing terrifies her.

In the back of my mind—what's left of it—I can hear one of my favorite songs playing.

_Missing you…_

Every day, I perform the only ritual I have left. I play shiny discs of sound and large plastic blobs that make even lovlier sound.

_And there's a storm that's raging,_

_Through my frozen heart tonite…_

I point again. I try to smile.

Emma moves toward the door I've shown her, avoiding getting too close to me. All around her, the living fall like trees. Trees. I think I remember those. Like ghosts in the ground, rising and calling to us. They calm me, when I see them. Before I came to this strange place, before I moved into my strange tunnel, with my discs and the songs that calm me, the trees had done the same. I died near a glistening, waving, weeping tree. Its leaves had rained dew across my heated forehead as my blood ran to its roots.

Back in the present moment, I shake from my sudden memory. It's strange to have memories again at all. I smell Emma's scent. I'm still ambling behind her. She smells like pine needles and she has a face like…like a _face_. It's such a nice face. With lips that are full and cheeks that are plump and beautiful eyes like a faint memory of some place I might have gone once. A place with sand. And sunshine. I wonder if Emma's brain tastes like sunshine? No. Mustn't think thoughts like that.

Emma's body has warmth that radiates from every part of it. Calling me along.

Somehow, despite my slow movements and perceptions, I see the voracious one before Emma does. It's teeth dive and swoop.

Q.

Stupid fucking Q. That's what I call him. He's a giant dead man with tattoos everywhere and the nicest beard (if not for all the gross dead he has caught in it).

The hungriest of our lot. Q is a gorger.

Q needs to be put down. I know this now.

Because of _Emma_.

Emma, who makes me feel like that weeping willow once did. Emma, who makes me feel like life can still exist inside me. As though in all of our dark dazed days, some light can still break through the clouds.

Q's head is like something soft and sharp at the same time. I crush it and Emma looks horrified and relieved at the same time.

We leave. I look back and see that the living are among us now, and there are no more screams. _Ruuuu_ is just eating and watching me leave as she does.

But the others see Emma try to escape.

"We have to hurry." I want to say. But Emma gets my drift, even though I've only just grunted "uhhh…waaahhhhuuuhhhhh" a few times.

The walk is lovely. I remember walking. Walking and wondering, "will she kiss me?" and "will I eat her?" No, no, that's not it. It's all meshed together. My memories of that other woman with all of her hair (gets in the way of skull doesn't it?) and the new woman and her brains. Dammit. Brains again. I stay three feet back, away from Emma, who runs in this shuffling pattern and watches me warily even as she shoots some of my kind.

I'm confused. I'm often confused. And the Real Dead are hovering nearby so we really must hurry.

Lovely Emma. I walk slowly as she leads the way.

The Real Dead are like the rest of us only they've been dead too long and hungry for even longer. They started to eat themselves at some point and I suppose it made them even sicker. I hear their screeching. They can smell Emma.

And suddenly, I'm walking like I used to. "Oooowwoooooooo…" I say and try to hurry ahead of Emma. To direct her.

The rest is a haze of light and dark and the sound of Emma's beautiful voice.

We're home soon after that and I'm able to close the big door behind us.

Home is a tunnel of steel and metal. I have sounds here, which soothe me. I play some for her, because Emma still looks afraid.

_Cry, Cry, Cry. _

Sounds I remember.

There are other things. Small cans of food. I know Emma will eat them (she doesn't eat brains, _obviously_) and there are lots left over from whatever happened to this steel thing I live in.

She sits, huddled up by a small window, and I grunt sort of frantically. She gets my point and sits on the floor, her gun still nearby.

"Peaches in a sugar syrup." Are the first words she says to me. She takes the cans from my hand with a laugh. The laughter is as beautiful as my music.

I put on my favorite song. The one that played in the back of my memories when I first saw Emma.

_Every time I think of you_

_I always catch my breath…_

The days go by and they go by fast for me.

Because even though I'm dead for the long haul, I'm still rotting away. Just like others. Rotting and readying to feed the trees with my final death. That's what I tried to tell _Ruuuu _once, but she just rolled her eyes. Rolled them so hard one sort of popped out and we had to shove it back in.

I eat the brains in my pocket a little at a time.

And as the days go by, Emma talks to me more and more.

"What happened to you? Do you remember?" She asks. I shake my head.

"You're very beautiful. I can tell you took care of yourself." She adds. "What did you do when you were alive?"

I want to say, "tree…" to that, but I don't think I was a tree exactly. I was the earth. Or I'm about to become the earth. That's the best thing. Better than eating my face until I can no longer think about anything at all. No, but I was…

"Mayor…" I say to her. What is that? I don't know. I'm sure it was just a grunt though. Or was it?

"Mayor?" She repeats the word and if I'd had a heartbeat then, it would have stopped again. I nod. Her mouth falls open in the most charming way.

Then she bursts into tears. She starts to tell me that people are waiting for her, and that her boyfriend died back there. I'm as sympathetic as anyone in my position can be. It was Q. That hungry bastard. Emma cries and cries and it goes on for such a long time that I get hungry and I have to sneak some brains. I won't hurt this woman. I won't. I'd rather eat my own face.

I'm wearing the same white business shirt I'd worn when I died. And the skirt I wear is still unwrinkled. It's covered in a smattering of blood but just a smattering. I'm neater than most of my kind. And I'm grateful, very, very grateful, that my shirt isn't too gory, because now Emma is hugging me.

And for just a moment, I feel it.

_I feel my heart spring to life again._

Emma feels it as well and she pulls back with a start. Her palm touches my chin.

"Warm…" She mutters. "What the fuck." Then her eyes widen. "I have to stop them. You're not all dead. I have to stop them!"

But it's dark out. And I hear my kind shuffling up the stairs outside. We were too noisy. Someone grunts, "Is there food in there?" or something like that, and I move to the door. I moan, "Go away!" or "Arrrroougggghhh!" and they go.

That night, Emma sleeps with her hand in mine. She mutters, "how can this be?" again and again. I don't need to sleep, so I just sit upright. When she shifts and her cheek falls against my chest, I count the number of times my heart sparks.

Three. Then four.

And then I remember a little more.

My father. He'd been a kind human. The day I died, we'd been walking. He was telling me, "you don't have to give up your happiness for all of this." There had been a homeless woman, leaning against a tree. The woman was coughing and shuffling and she lunged for my father.

"Run, run!" My father screamed as he died, but not out of fear for himself. The man who had once pushed me on a swing, so high that the sun flashed in my eyes, was leaving me. He tried to protect me even as a dead thing ate his chest wide open. And the trees. The Weeping Willows. They wept in sympathy, that this beautiful person would meet such an end. This person who had sat with me, eating cereal with me, while I sobbed and watched some terrible cartoon, the day my mother was taken down a hallway in a white hospital with a sheet over her face…he was leaving me also…

And then the Weeping Willows wept for me. Because _I'd_ rather have died than let my father die alone and screaming. I took his hand and I felt the teeth sink into my ankle.

Emma wakes when one of my tears touches her cheek.

Her palm is warm.

"You saved my life." She says. "And you're alive. You're actually alive…"

The sirens happen next. The sirens and the gun shots and the angry voices.

This isn't going to be a battle that my kind will win. I know it. The living can be vicious, furious, when death comes for them. Especially, when death wears faces so familiar.

Our refuge is lit up and I get to my feet and I yank Emma up with me. If we're careful…

And we are. We manage to sneak out the side before any of the army personnel think to search the airplane where I'd found myself after wandering away from the park that day.

We walk toward the hole in the fence. When lights cross our path, I freeze and Emma does the same. Then we run. Well, she runs and I sort of shuffle and jog.

Because the army isn't our only problem. And thank goodness, Emma has a gun with a silencer, because when she shoots three Real Dead, no one hears it.

There are houses. Empty, white, boxes. I want one. I think I even remember where my own is. So I lead us there.

I'm so clever that I even find the key I'd once hidden in a rock beneath a tree. I grin and Emma takes the key from my hand.

"We've been walking for six hours, I need a bath. And I hope to god there's canned food in there." She whispers and limps toward the back door.

A state of the art security system, including metal bars that shut quickly over the windows should anybody try to get in, means that my house is empty when we manage to open all three bolts. There is a quiet moan to the right of us and when I turn to see, I see that it's _Ruuuu_…she's followed us and now she's 'hiding' quite badly in the bushes.

"You'll eat my girlfriend." I grunt.

"She's not your girlfriend yet, you idiot." She grunts back. "Let me inside." She adds. "Those ugly ones are all over the place now."

"Don't eat my girlfriend." I grunt again.

"She's not…ok, nevermind, I promise." _Ruuuu_ holds up three fingers and moans in what I'm sure she thinks is a reassuring way at Emma. Emma looks terrified and for a moment I wonder if she'll lock us both out. Obviously, our little conversation sounded like a lot of nonsense to her.

Three hours (days?) later, _Ruuuu_ and I are sharing brains in the basement while Emma sleeps upstairs, in a safe room I'd had installed the year I cut all of the homeless programs.

"Serves me right, getting eaten by a homeless woman." I grunt. _Ruuuu_ nods in agreement.

"_Ruuuuu_…_beeeee_…Ruby…" I try to say her name properly. She looks impressed.

Emma eats what she can find, and she sleeps a great deal. She lets me come upstairs but insists that Ruby stay behind a locked door.

One night, we play cards.

"I'm bored. You're the only…well, you're the only person, alive or dead, that I have to talk to." Emma rambles. She's cute when she rambles. She wears a tank top and her arms are bare and slim but muscular. I want to lick her like a lollipop. I bet she'd taste like salty candy with a hint of earth.

"Are you listening to me?" She shuffles her cards. "Stop looking at me like I'm lunch." But she grins. "Letch…"

I sort of grunt and smirk and try not to be too obvious when I stare at her boobs.

"Booooobs…" I can't help but say in total awe.

"I heard that." Emma sighs and throws her cards down. I'm not a very good player. She basically has to play both of our hands. She pulls her knees up to her chest and watches out the window. We're in my old bedroom. I used to like it here. I get up and shuffle to the walk-in closet. Emma watches me. "You want to get changed?" She asks. "I can…" She clears her throat nervously as I fumble with the handle to my old closet. "I can help."

We choose a new blouse and a blazer, so that I'll have some coverage from the elements at least to a small degree. When we take away my old shirt, Emma grimaces and shudders. But then she sees my skin.

"You're barely…I mean you're not all crumbling or anything." Her fingertips graze my collarbones and that warmth hits me again. Right in the chest. Her eyes trail down and over the hem of my skirt, where her fingers follow. When she slips my skirt off and kneels at my feet, my heart doesn't just spring to life again, it hammers painfully in my chest.

"Ow." I say quietly, holding my hand there. I breathe out. Then in. Then out. Then in. and the wonder of breathing makes me weep.

"Oh. Wow." Emma's eyes are damp also. She pulls me close and we hug, but it's sort of frantic on her part and I'm suddenly terrified.

Her hair tickles my nose and her arms wind gently around me like the sweetest dream. "Oh…" She says again. Her body pushes against mine until every part of me is touching her that possibly can. It's like she's trying to warm me up.

There are oils in my old bathroom, that I once used to use on my skin. Emma makes me lay, only in my bra and underwear, on the bed, while she rubs those oils everywhere. If I thought my heartbeat was shocking before, it's even more jarring through this treatment. She helps me with my bra and panties, then orders me to the washroom, where I sit in lukewarm water and more oil and just stare and stare at my fingernails as they regain color.

Then she dresses me, carefully pulling every item over me, smoothing her hands over my skin as she does.

I still don't sleep that night, and when Emma wakes in the morning—after spending most of her time with her head on my chest again—she's disappointed to find that my heart has stilled.

"In time, perhaps." She decides with a frown.

But how can I tell her that it's not something that time will fix? It's only her touch that brings me life now. But it's too much of a burden to place on anybody, so I don't say anything.

Later, I have to go outside to find something alive, because Ruby tries to eat one of her own fingers.

"No. _Ruuuu-_by No." I manage to say the words and hold her back. Our brain supply is long gone, and I'm hungry as well.

I find rabbits. They're actually everywhere, which is amazing, because I just hadn't noticed them before.

And then I really take a look around.

In the yard, in front of the house, two deer eat the shrubbery. And beside them, a fawn. The most beautiful little creature I've seen, sits and whines and waits for its mother.

The deer see me and are nearly startled into leaving, but I back up three steps and they don't move.

Across the street, there are more deer. And the trees are full of birds.

All around our decaying species, the rest of life has thrived.

If I wasn't so distracted, I might have avoided the net that some army idiot threw from beside me. But, what can you do?

Ruby, Emma and I are taken into army custody. Of course Emma rides up front, with a man who keeps calling her 'Ems' and tells her to calm down.

"They can be brought back!" She shouts, again and again.

Ruby is beside herself. I've got both her hands in mine and though she's gnashing her teeth with starvation, I manage to keep her from biting either one of us. We're in the back of this armored vehicle but it still has a small window in back, through which I can still watch the deer.

I'm smiling when they remove Ruby and I and someone hits me in the face with their gun when they see it. Emma screams, but I gesture as if to say, "it didn't hurt." It sort of did, sort of didn't, like the memory of a lost limb or something.

We're led down a dark, metal hallway, but I like this one much less than my home in the airport. All around us, the Real Dead sit in prisons that I'm certain won't hold them for long.

"We're starving them, seeing how long they can go without food before they finally rot away." A gross, sweaty little man in a green uniform tells Emma this while she stares forlornly at me. Between us, Ruby starts to panic and I hold her tightly to me.

We're giving our own cell, Ruby and I. That first night is hard. I'm not that strong and I eventually have to use my blazer—slipped over Ruby's arms from the front and tied in the back—to help. That morning, Emma sneaks in with a few raw steaks and I give Ruby two and keep one for myself. Ruby is so skinny. She is sinew and bone and jerky dead muscle, twitching in my arms, but she is still Ruby. Her hair glistens darkly in the moonlight, and I imagine that many would have loved her in life. I kiss her cheek. I tell her softly of the warmth that Emma gave me. I tell her that maybe she'll find her own warmth again. For a second, I think she believes me.

The day they catch Emma sneaking us food again, is the day the Real Dead break free.

"They're hunting in packs." Someone shouts.

Yes, right. We liked to do that back in the old days. The days before Emma. We'd pull together hunting parties and attack the living. Except that over time, the dead packs outnumbered the living and the living retreated to stronger and stronger walls.

A siren goes off.

"They're coming." Ruby wheezes.

Emma rushes toward our cell and my heart beats with relief. When she feels it spark to life, Ruby turns hungrily toward me.

"Please." I grunt. "Please be calm."

But my heart won't stop, and Ruby's hunger is too great, and so we struggle mightily as Emma fumbles with the lock to the cell.

Behind Emma, the hallway is suddenly bright with light and screeching noise.

When she bursts into our cell, she pulls a gun and holds it to Ruby's temple.

"No." I try to say. "Feel." And I take Ruby's hand and I hold it to my chest. "This. You. You!" I form the words and Ruby's eyes widen. Because she realizes that she could have this as well. She could care so much for something that all of that caring could surge into new life.

She throws herself in front of Emma when one of the Real Dead screeches and runs toward us.

"Go." Ruby grunts, swiping at the creature between us and the actual exit.

Emma takes her gun and points it at Ruby again. But then she fires it, and the bullet flies over Ruby's shoulder and into the brain of the creature that tries to kill us.

Emma and I make it out of the prison while Ruby stays mired in a fight I'm sure no one will win.

Three of the Real Dead fly for Emma, and I take my chances, throwing myself in front of her and welcoming death, as their hands clutch at me and my heart finally begins to beat for good.

**Epilogue.**

Well, my heart didn't beat for good, of course. Nobody lives forever. Not even the dead. But my heart beat for a long time that day, and into the next. I'd fought the Real Dead off valiantly, but it was the army that killed most of them. And somehow, I managed to pull Ruby from the fray.

Ruby lives next door, with a doctor (also a former dead person) and a small dog that they never try to eat.

I'm lazing about in bed. Since I discovered sleep again, I just can't get enough of it. First, it took me days and days of sleep just to heal my circulatory system. Days and days more to heal my voice box.

A hand brushes against my bare back, and Emma's voice sounds in my ear.

"I brought coffee. And toast." Her lips press to my neck and I moan appreciatively. This moan sounds very different from the sounds I used to make. She hushes me, snickering when I slide my palm up her thigh.

But then we push apart and a bundle of energy in the form of a three year old boy comes bursting through the door.

"Mama!" The squeaky child shouts at me, and I smile when he lands on the bedding. He's the loveliest human I've ever met, tied for first place with Emma.

She'd been pregnant when we first got together. It had taken some convincing, to even get her to date me. She was scared that I'd slip backwards in time. But I was fully alive the first time she kissed me, and the first time we went to bed together, I showed her how well healed every part of me was. Sure, sometimes my ankle still hurts, from the mauling and the limping and all, but it is the last thing on my mind when Emma's body presses nakedly, warmly, to mine.

I won't let anything happen to these ones. Even as I catch the scent of a new death from the Eastern shores, I promise myself that I'll protect them.


	2. Chapter 2

_And you_

_You knew the hand of the devil_

_And you_

_Kept us awake with wolves' teeth_

_Sharing different heartbeats in one night_

_-The Knife_

"So _you_ ate people." Emma says it in a funny sort of way, emphasizing the 'you' rather than 'ate' as though I am no position to judge the terrible acts of others.

But I am in a position to judge. I have to judge. Because otherwise, how do I maintain a line between the person I am now—living—and the undead menace I used to be?

"I used to be a different person." I reply with an exhausted sigh. "A non-person." I add with a shrug. Emma frowns. She's adorable when she frowns but I wish I could make her smile more often.

Dead, undead, dead. Hard to tell the difference as I sits in a hospital bed, in a highly secure glassed-in box, while zombies wander around in glass boxes of their own.

My gown itches and the incisions on my newly repaired ankle also itch. With all of the pins and stitches in the ankle, I feel I more like Frankenstein's monster than anything else. Some of the others can be reformed as well. Their hearts can spark to life and their mangled minds can stop craving the brains of the living.

I am struggling to adjust to all of this.

Another thing I'm struggling with is Emma herself. It's hard getting to know someone when you think you might already be in love with them. She says that she's still grieving, but Emma still sleeps close to me at night. I let her have her space. It isn't hard, since the hospital bed I inhabit is narrow and the cot she sleeps on is even narrower. Emma comes from a military family. Her father travelled a lot when she was young and when he retired, he moved them all to the country so that they could immerse themselves in various survival skills. Now her family runs this compound with three other families. There have been countless battles fought and won, but I hear rumors that one of Emma's siblings is out there somewhere, a member of the zombie army instead.

Sometimes, she makes sounds in her sleep and I'm able to roll onto my stomach and reach out to touch her. My fingertips brush against her hair or over her arm and she is quiet again.

On nights like these, my heart aches and I wish I could run away.

"What did I do last night?" She asks sometimes as we poke through the odd assortment of 'breakfast' foods I'm given each morning.

"Nothing much," I lie when she thrashes around and sleeps poorly.

There comes a day when I'm allowed to wander off beyond the compound. I need to get away so I make up some excuse.

"Do you want a ride-along?" The nurse means to ask if I want assigned guards. I shake my head for the umpteenth time as I button my silk shirt and sink into a uniform like the kind I used to wear. I tell the nurse another curt 'no' and she finally leaves me alone.

Walking outside into the sunshine hurts every cell in my body. I try to act as though I'm not tearing up and stinging and searing from the outside in. In my desperation to appear normal, I refuse to recognize the signs that indicate my status as anything but…

When I come to, Emma is there. Her hair is golden in sunlight that seems to light her from within. She laughs at me when I mutter the words aloud. Her hand is warm and solid in mine when I am hauled to my feet, still shaky.

Friendship is not enough, not where Emma is concerned, and I don't want to push. I still can't look at her—those cheekbones, those blue-green eyes, that long, golden hair—without hearing a ridiculous array of love songs from my youth.

Emma liked the sound of my voice even though I'd lose my breath a little just talking to her. She seemed happy to see me, to spend time with me, but still, Emma frowned a great deal…her eyes seemed haunted so much of the time…

"I'm sorry," she says, and then holds my hand and hides her tears against my shoulder. "I'm sorry…"

The skirt I'd chosen is grey and the fabric is cheaper than I would have preferred. I'm still pleased. I feel as though I'm back to something of a comfort zone.

"You're different." Emma says. I nod because I certainly am quite improved but perhaps not quite what Emma had expected. But Emma just smiles nervously and walks by my side. Her fingers brush against mine from time to time, sending a tingle up my arm. I long to hold her hand but somehow it seems to be too soon.

I am not attached to many of my memories. I am, however, attached to the person whose death I'd witnessed just before my own.

My father…I couldn't forget that look in his eyes as he died. I couldn't stop dreaming about him when dreaming came and I could sleep again.

Life is most complicated for the living.

"I have to check on relatives." I lie. Well, it's a half lie. I am worried about a particular aunt, someone who had once been kind to me when I was a teen. So I've decided to take a few days from the anguish of new, nearly unrequited love, and I rush off to see a relative who is likely either a rotten corpse or a _walking _rotting corpse.

There is nothing like the moment when a loved one leaves. Nothing quite like loss sharpens the edges of a room, heightens its dimensionality, and sinks your stomach to the floor, the crown of your head to the heights of the sky.

I check my weapons over carefully. In the middle of it all, I catch a glimpse of myself in a mirror and spend a ridiculous amount of time watching for signs of any remaining marks of my previous state.

And then, Emma is behind me.

I wish I could touch her…all of her…I wish I could do for her what she'd done for me, when her hands had brought me so close to life…

We end up hugging goodbye beside my getaway car.

"I used to make out with this friend…ummm…she was…" She licks her lips nervously and I stare at the act, wishing she'd repeat it.

"She?" I choke out.

Emma doesn't continue with that story though. Her hands hang loosely against my shoulders as I grip her waist in what I hope isn't a constraining way. "Will you come back?" Emma looks as sad as I feel. I smile tensely, uncertain if I will return.

And then she lets me go and I learn yet again that if a heart can beat then it can break and break and break again.

I use one of the army jeeps to travel to my aunt's house. This particular aunt had been a role model—self-sufficient to a fault, my father used to say. She'd likely waited out the coming apocalypse behind her barred windows and heavily locked doors.

When I arrive, I see just how accurate my predictions were. It would have been impossible to get into the place, had I not remembered the well-hidden combination lock near the back door.

My chest still aches, but at least I have a task or two—or a dozen—ahead of me.

The rooms are empty, which seems strange. The whole house seems strange in fact. I walk through more than once, with a pistol in one hand and a machete in the other. Of course I check under beds, in closets. Who knows, perhaps she's paranoid, worried I'm one of the undead? Then again, perhaps she'd just left in a rush and had simply failed to return.

I find an entire pantry stocked with dried grains, canned beans, fruit and vegetables, and an area in the eerily quiet backyard, where someone had obviously been cooking on open fires.

There is a record player on the first floor, shoved up against a dusty pile of crates holding an impressive vinyl collection. I play that same John Waite album that I'd once had on repeat in my airplane. History repeats itself.

…_and there's a storm that's raging, through my frozen heart tonite…_

I play the song again and again, while I cook in the backyard. It's a simple stew of beans and rice and I eat it quickly, feeling watched the whole time.

…_stop this heartbreak overload…_

I sniffle with tears that sting but don't fall. There is sound behind me and I turn quickly but see nothing. The fire dies in front of me and I retreat inside again.

It's too early for sleep, but I curl up in a guest room bed, wearing loose cotton pants and a tank top I'd worn beneath my sweater earlier. I'm thirsty and lonely and can't sleep so before long, I shuffle out of bed.

As it turns out, my last living relative is not living at all. And she's been waiting for me in the last guest room on the left.

The Real Dead are voracious, yes, but they are also clever. And when I'd checked the house, she'd used the fact that people rarely look _up_ when they are searching for someone.

The fight starts quietly. A hand grips my ankle and I feel its dead flesh over jagged bone, a split second before I fall.

As I fall to the ground and my nails scrabble against the flooring, I think about Emma's face, and I wish against hope to see her before I'm dragged back over to the other side.

I kick, hard, with the ankle that aches and this time I get away. But then there are others. I can hear them, moaning and screaming, and coming for me.

Running hurts. Not just because of my ankle, either, but because I'm dreadfully out of shape. There is gun fire down the street and I run toward it like my life depends on it (which it does) I run and I shout for help. The humans (I have to keep reminding myself that I'm a part of them again) are fighting with knives and machetes and they look furious at their prey, at the Real Dead who screech in their final throes…

Beyond any hope, she is there. There, amid the chaos, is Emma—she is covered in gore and she carries an actual sword, like some White Knight.

Her scream when she sees me is part joyous, part terrified, and part furious and it only takes one vicious swing for her to decapitate my chaser…

"Emma, I'm sorry I left," I try to say out loud but she knocks the breath out of me in a flying hug.

We go to my aunt's home to wash everybody off before the group decides what they'll do next.

"How did you find me?" I ask politely, sponging more and more dead gore from her hairline.

She hesitates so I squeeze her shoulder gently. It's really ok, whatever she'd been thinking. "I stalked you," she mutters. "I followed you because I didn't want you to go."

My heart leaps and I intensify my efforts to clean her because I so desperately want to do so much more.

A few of the others are angry that Emma had led them on this crusade in the first place, so they're happy to let us stay behind. But I don't want to be in the house any longer, because as safe as it may seem it also feels like a place where one goes to end their days.

The ride back is slow, agonizingly so, because Emma drives while I sit at the back of the jeep, next to an odd woman named Angelique who seems overly fascinated by my relationship with our driver.

"When did you meet?" She asks slyly, casting an admiring look at my chest, where three buttons are undone on the white silk shirt I'd thrown hastily on.

"When I was dead." I reply and she is stunned into silence.

And then, the realization hits me. I am alone, without any more family. My last known relative is gone.

I long for home.

"Please, can we try my old house again?" I call to Emma who smiles sadly at me in the rearview mirror.

In the end, we wait a few days, staying with the larger group in the compound, while Emma decides for us.

"There are supplies," I insist. "And we can install bars and security gates and ummm…" I think about all of the windows that let so much sunlight in. I think about the animals that must be in the yard, populating the street.

But Emma isn't sure—about a lot of things—and we stay put.

Weeks later, there is another battle and this one is enormous. The Real Dead had congregated at the gates, lying on their bellies in wait for one of the messengers to return from their visits to neighboring communities. When Emma returns, she is sickly pale and terrified looking, her skin stretched taught over her cheekbones. Her entire left side of covered in fine droplets of blood and gore. Then she throws up, right at my feet, and I pat her back and say "there, there…now can we leave?" I earn a grunt of dissention but she stands up again and I win the argument.

Emma's father is part of a 'resettlement' project, in which members of the living are encouraged to find prosperity in their old homes again. It's a pragmatic as well as philosophical decision on his part—they are running out of room after all—and a plan is in place for those stupid enough to agree to it.

A small entourage follows Emma and I out of the compound. This time, I feel much freer and a whole lot less sad about my departure. My arm slings casually against the side of the Jeep, the window is down, and I let the wind blow my hair back. The air tastes clean again somehow and I am optimistic.

Iron bars are installed over every window in my home, moments after we arrive. The fence would take longer but a temporary structure of barbed wire and motion detecting lighting is a start. Emma and I are left with plenty of ammo and guns and we move them inside. The group takes a good hour to thoroughly check through the house while I cheerfully pluck at some of the foliage that the deer had mangled. My tulips are gone, but I ask one of the less dour looking members of our guard if she might consider delivering bulbs when she has a free day. She blushes and smiles and I touch her arm, lingering there so that Emma—who already looks beautifully flustered—turns red with jealousy.

I've already decided not to worry about my friendship with Emma. If she doesn't want to move things to another level, that's her decision—I won't pine forever.

"A woman like me doesn't stay single long," I'd once spewed the cliché to an ex-girlfriend, who had responded with the instruction that I grow the hell up.

No pining. Instead, I clean. I cook. I organize my life again. I make a home for us.

"Hey, we need firewood." Emma reminds me one morning, padding into the kitchen in her pajamas. I've always been of the opinion that grownups dress by the time they leave their bedroom, but she's too cute to reprimand.

I'm wearing a vintage Dior dress and my best pearls but I go to work as soon as Emma says the word. It's dangerous, spending time in the backyard, with mainly hedges protecting us. I rush outside and survey the yard, bringing two axes and a chainsaw. The chainsaw stays plugged in, in case of Dead visitors, and the second axe stays close for the same reasons. I get to work, swinging my axe through the air on an already propped up log. The wood piles quickly as I throw it behind me in a heap near the door.

There is a flash of movement to my left. A foot juts through the bushes and a face—pale grey and rotting—pushes tentatively out.

I turn the chainsaw on and he retreats immediately.

"This is a horrible plan." I fume and curse as Emma helps me with the firewood an hour later. "We need a better system, a better fence." She is still in her pajamas as she takes armloads of wood to the living room. I've locked the back door and watch as three Real Dead wander into the yard.

"Don't be so stressed," Emma's voice is soft but a little hoarse. She'd been up in her room the night before, reading late again. I can tell from the dark circles under her eyes.

"What's going on with you?" The wood can wait. I put a hand tentatively on her arm and pull her toward the kitchen table. She hasn't even finished her cereal, from what I see. And when she looks down at the bowl, her cheeks turn pale. "Ok," I say, "I'll get rid of it." There is a sinking feeling in my stomach and it isn't just because one of the jerks outside has thrown a damn pebble at our kitchen window.

The rest of the day passes in a blur. Emma keeps asking, "how can I bring anybody into this world?" and I spend my time trying to find a particular book on pregnancy while she gets rid of the pregnancy tests she'd smuggled out from the compound's medical wing.

Before the zombie outbreak killed the recording industry, a movie was made about _The Secret Life of Walter Mitty_. I liked that film a great deal and bought the soundtrack. Emma, apparently, also loves it and plays the record again and again throughout the day.

_Dawn is coming open your eyes._

Hours and hours later, our woodpile is still haphazard in the living room, and I've had too much wine.

"Please don't go. Just promise me that." I plead.

We lay on the couch together, after debating the pros and cons of allowing Emma to just run outside and let herself be eaten by the monsters. As far as I'm concerned, it's a really terrible idea. But Emma is despondent.

"Absurd," I say again and again. My eyes sting with tears and my skin itches. It's 1am when I fall asleep with a hand clamped over Emma's wrist. It's 3am when I wake to the feeling of hair tickling my nose and a heavy head weighing me down. Her cheek rests over my heartbeat and I hold on tight.

The next day is busy because we'd neglected our chores. There are the stragglers at our front door. I'd given them a chance to leave, but the ones left behind are picked off from my balcony. I shoot each one with vigor, as though the world might be safer with every bullet. Then I move on to the dead that linger on other lawns. This goes on for some time. It isn't until Emma approaches from behind, shouting my name, over the noise I'm making, that I take a break. Her arms wrap around my shoulder and she leans on me. It takes me a long time to hug her back, because my hands are shaking and my arms are sore and I seem to actually be weeping.

"Are you laughing, or crying?" She asks politely. Her lips brush against my ear and I shiver.

"Both." I decide.

There are other errands to be completed but I let the hugging go on awhile longer. But my anxieties take over. I have to make something for Emma to eat and that requires well water, so I pull back with a smile and get on with my business. I try not to act overly interested in the look of disappointment on Emma's face.

The hugs and small touches and general expressions of affection continue throughout the week. At night, Emma asks to sleep in my room. She's in need of extra security or something, which makes sense I suppose, since there is another life on the way to take care of. At first, we sleep apart, talking quietly before we drift off. In the morning, Emma gets up first, throwing on her robe and making breakfast downstairs for me. The distance between us is protective, both of her and of I.

"Shouldn't I be doing this for you?" I ask politely, sipping the smoothie we'd collaborated on with actual homemade yogurt. There had been a jar still unopened in the cold cellar and we had milk from the compound. "We should get a cow." I decide.

"A cow? That's weird. Anyway. I like doing things for you too." Emma smiles sweetly and touches my hand.

That night, I hold out my arm and she scoots closer.

"So." I blink at the wall. "Um…congratulations. I don't think I said that before."

"Thanks." She's quiet for a long time, her hands loose on my hips. Her grip tightens momentarily and I fight the urge to push toward her like a ridiculous teenager or something. My breath quickens though. I can't hide that. She clears her throat. "So, remember that day," her voice shakes, "remember that day when you were chopping wood?"

"Yeah." I try not to stutter.

"I watched you. It was…you were really strong. And like, alive and…ummm…strong." She tapers weakly off.

"Hmmmm?" I'm genuinely curious now and push away so that I can see her eyes despite the dim room. "You sound surprised." It hits me, harder than it should have, because it's so damned obvious. "You thought I'd regress?"

Emma nods and smiles sheepishly. "Also," she adds then stops talking.

"Also...what?" God—I'm a second from ripping her ridiculous baby blue pajama top off of her if she doesn't just talk to me. My hormones are pulsating through me.

"Also," Emma leans as she speaks. And then her lips are against my clavicle and her tongue darts out before she pulls away and adds, "you look really sexy when you're doing physical labor in couture."

I bark with unexpected laughter which is cut off when her mouth reaches upward in the darkness and our lips meet.

It is a really great kiss. Her lips are fuller than they look and her tongue is against my teeth sends tingles down my spine. She smiles against my own questing lips and tongue and buries her hands in my hair and then the feeling of those fingers massaging my scalp makes me melt all over again.

We have time and I'm suddenly happier than I've been in months to take things slowly. My mouth slides over her jawline and I nuzzle her throat as her body covers me.

"Let's slow down." I say with some effort. But we're both sleepy and warm and it doesn't seem like an awful idea in the end. Emma just smiles against my lips, kisses me again, and borrows against me.


End file.
